Tom Paine’s Bones (a poem for voices) By Gary Corseri

By Gary Corseri
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
June 14, 2009

CHORUS: Go down to the Valley Forge, Tom Paine;
go down to the Valley Forge:
four thousand ghosts of an idea stand
guttering in the siege of winter,
slow-jigging in their ragged socks
while the Master General broods;
while the Master General writes and begs
aid from the wavering French.
Go and be prodigal; seal:
the holes in their blankets with words;
knit: the soles of their shoes with courage;
write: on a drumhead by the fire’s crackle,
drum-beaten words for their wounds,
balm for their wondering wounds:

PAINE: These are the times that
try men’s souls.
The summer soldier
and the sunshine patriot
will, in this crisis
shrink
from the service of their country;
but he that stands it now,
deserves the love and thanks
of man and woman.

America Incorporated By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
June 14, 2009

So many different viewpoints by so many different people are starting to drive me to distraction. But isn’t that the point? It would be a very bad thing for those that are supposedly running this country if the people were all on the same page and actually realized what was going on. I call this part of our “American experience” pure fantasy wrapped in solid, realistic, wishful thinking. We can’t see the forest not for the trees, but because there is no forest, it’s been mortgaged to China along with the rest of the country.

I don’t want anyone thinking that those in power don’t know what they are doing; they know exactly what they are doing. This doesn’t mean that Obama knows what he is doing, but he isn’t the one in power now, is he? No, the sad truth is that those that make policy while the politicians play pretend know exactly what they are doing. The days of nation-states setting policy for themselves is quickly coming to a close. Those who are fortunate/unfortunate to understand the big game plan really don’t have the heart to tell the governments that believe they are running their countries the truth, the game plan has changed and if this were baseball, the politicians would be playing the position of left-out.

De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire by Prof. Michael Hudson

Dandelion Salad

by Prof. Michael Hudson
Global Research, June 13, 2009

The Yekaterinburg Turning Point

The city of Yakaterinburg, Russia’s largest east of the Urals, may become known not only as the death place of the tsars but of American hegemony too – and not only where US U-2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, but where the US-centered international financial order was brought to ground.

Challenging America will be the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

Azerbaijan And The Caspian: NATO’s War For World’s Heartland by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/39969
June 14, 2009

Welcoming Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov to Foggy Bottom in early May of this year, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could think of nothing more original to say than “Azerbaijan has a very strategic location that is one important not only to their country, but really, regionally and globally….” [1]

But what Clinton’s effusion lacked in originality it compensated for in accuracy. Azerbaijan is as strategically situated as any nation in the world within the current contest between Western plans for global military domination and control of energy resources and contrasting efforts by other nations to secure a peaceful and multipolar international order.

The nation of only slightly more than eight million people is nestled in the far southeast corner of the Caucasus on the coast of the Caspian Sea, bordering all the other Caucasus nations – Armenia, Georgia and Russia – on its northern and western borders and Iran on its southern one.

US Media Campaign to Discredit Iranian Election By Charting Stock

Dandelion Salad

By Charting Stock
ICH
June 13, 2009 “Charting Stocks”

See also:- Lights turned off on media after elections: The AFP news agency reported that Iran’s wireless telephone network was shut down at 5:30pm GMT (10:00pm in Tehran), just as incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was making a television appearance to congratulate himself on a “great victory”.

See also:- Landslide or Fraud? The Debate Online Over Iran’s Election Results: We will bring you updates throughout the day and encourage Iranian readers to share their thoughts and experiences with us.

Was the Iranian election a fraud? That’s what our great western media sources want us to believe. While scanning through the coverage, I could not find one mainstream news article which covered the election results in an objective, unbiased manner. Either prominently displayed  in the title or first paragraph, each of the articles suggest the election was a fraud. The obvious question arises – If their electoral system can’t be trusted, why were they watching the results so “closely” in the first place?  I’d probably  find better things to do then obsess over the results of a rigged game, but hey that’s just me.

[…]

Was the election stolen? According to the Iranian Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, there has been no ‘written complaint’ about voter fraud. He declared that the presidential elections were conducted in a manner that ruled out the possibility of voter fraud. “No violations that may have influenced the vote have been reported, and we have received no written complaint,” he said in response to a question posed by an Italian reporter.

[…]

via: Information Clearing House

see

Some observations on the Iranian presidential election and its aftermath by Phil Wilayto

Presidential election in Iran: selected items from the British press

Pepe Escobar: Ahmadi Big Bang + Police Attack Protesters

Netanyahu OK with a demilitarized Palestinian state

Dandelion Salad

JTA
June 14, 2009

JERUSALEM JTA — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would agree to a demilitarized Palestinian state.

in a major foreign policy address Sunday at Bar-Ilan University, Netanyahu also said the Palestinians to have a state must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

“It is impossible to agree on the principle of a Palestinian state without these” conditions, he said.

If Israel receives assurances that the two conditions are met, Netanyahu said, “we will be ready in the future” for a “demilitarized Palestinian state that exists alongside a Jewish state.” Such a demilitarized state, he said, could not import weapons, make pacts with enemies of Israel and would not be able to close its airspace to Israel.

[…]

via Netanyahu OK with a demilitarized Palestinian state | JTA – Jewish & Israel News

see

Israel-Palestine-Gaza-Occupation

Inside the Peruvian Amazon

Dandelion Salad

Warning

This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

TheRealNews

Ben Powless: President can hunt indigenous leader all he wants, the movement came from below

Some observations on the Iranian presidential election and its aftermath by Phil Wilayto

Dandelion Salad

by Phil Wilayto
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/
June 13, 2009

Sunday Times, 14 June 2009

As this is being written, official announcements in Iran today of a landslide victory by incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are being met with cries of “fraud” by supporters of his principal challenger, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Omitted attribution by Dr. Ellen Brown

by Dr. Ellen Hodgson Brown
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
webofdebt.com
June 14, 2009

Ralph Foster, author of “Fiat Paper Currency — The History and Evolution of Our Money,” points out that the quote opening my article of May 19, 2009 on the Weimar inflation came from his book. (“It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. The shelves in the grocery store were empty. You could buy nothing with your paper money.”) My source was a secondary one that omitted that attribution, so I’ll make it here with apologies. Here is an endorsement of Foster’s groundbreaking book by Ruth Hanham, Ph.D., of Harvard University:

“[Foster] states his case clearly, drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, touching upon many diverse cultures, from the Chinese to the European to the North American. His professional familiarity with all types of currency and coinage grounds the book, making it refreshingly free of airy theories and complicated jargon, accessible to any intelligent reader. I highly recommend it.”
Ruth S. Arnon Hanham
Ph.D. History
Harvard University 1978

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her eleven books include the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com

see

Time To Get Out The Wheelbarrows? Another Look At The Weimar Hyperinflation by Ellen Brown

Out Of The Ashes Of Gm: The Phoenix Of Renewable Energy by Dr. Ellen Brown

Presidential election in Iran: selected items from the British press

Propaganda Alert

compiled by Cem Ertür
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
14 June 2009

Times, 13 June 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article648934 1.ece

Lifting the veil

A generation of young women voters is rejecting Iran’s repressive regime and challenging the patriarchal orthodoxy of the Muslim world

leading article, Times, 13 June 2009

_________________

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-ira ns-old-guard-are-poised-to-crush-any-hope-of-revolution-1703225.html

Iran’s old guard are poised to crush any hope of revolution

by Robert Fisk, Independent, 12 June 2009

_________________

Pepe Escobar: Ahmadi Big Bang

Dandelion Salad

TheRealNews

Fishy vote count + Guile + Tactics: Why Ahmadinejad won

Guantánamo’s Hidden History: Shocking Statistics of Starvation by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
14 June 2009

“Guantánamo’s Hidden History: Shocking Statistics of Starvation” is a report I’ve compiled for Cageprisoners analyzing the weight records for prisoners at Guantánamo (released by the Pentagon in March 2007), which demonstrate that, from January 2002, when the prison opened, until February 2007, when these particular records came to an end, one in ten of the total population — 80 prisoners in total — weighed, at some point, less than 112 pounds (eight stone, or 50 kg), and 20 of these prisoners weighed less than 98 pounds (seven stone, or 44 kg).

The report is available here (as a PDF):
Guantanamo’s Hidden History: Shocking Statistics Of Starvation

The following is the introduction to the report:

A chance conversation with a little Afghan girl

Dandelion Salad

ourjourneytosmile
June 14, 2009

I was on the way home when I chanced upon a gem of a little Afghan girl.‎
She was gathering leek next to a potato plot.‎

What’s your name?‎
Er..Raoshan.‎

I’m in the first grade and I go to school.‎

What are you doing now?‎
Huh? Now, I’m cutting leek.‎

[…]

Bill Moyers Journal: Robert Reich + Thomas Paine + Gun Violence

Dandelion Salad

Bill Moyers Journal
June 12, 2009

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich sits down with Bill Moyers to talk about the influence of lobbyists on policy, the economy, and the ongoing debate over health care.

via Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

War is the only language humanity understands By Roland Michel Tremblay

By Roland Michel Tremblay
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
The Marginal
14 June, 2009

At this time we cannot state that this world is moral, just or ethical, whatever the area of society: political, religious, corporate and even people taken individually. Life is more like a struggle and a fight to survive than anything else. We have reached an all time low. What can society expect of its citizens, if all they ever encounter is pettiness, selfishness, unfairness and punishment? Well then, we should expect war at every turn, and this is what we witness everyday everywhere. But there is hope for humanity.

There is always a larger picture to everything, to any situation, to any debate or attack, no matter how small it is. Should there not be some sort of ideal world we could all live in, where everyone would be allowed to find happiness, or at least some sort of compromise which could make it all acceptable and livable?